Studies have shown that using smartphones while walking—called distracted walking—significantly increases the probability of pedestrians colliding with dangerous objects. For example, the number of emergency room cases for injuries caused by distracted walking in 2010 exceeded 1500 in the United States, but based on statistics, the number of injuries is typically larger, by a factor of 1000, than the reported figure. Such accidents are also severe; for example people may walk distracted into the middle of the road and get knocked down by an oncoming car, or may bump into electric poles/trees causing head injuries.
Several applications are available in the Google Play Store that passively attempt to prevent people from bumping into obstacles, for example, showing the rear camera view of the phone in the background of certain applications. However, none of these applications can actively alert users in real time when they are approaching a dangerous object while focused on tasks with the phone. Moreover, such methods do not work if the background of applications, such as games, is not allowed to be changed.
To alleviate these problems, this disclosure proposes a mobile app for use on a smartphone which is referred to herein as BumpAlert. The BumpAlert application actively detects objects ahead of users and alerts them in real time of the objects. The BumbAlert application relies only on sensors readily available in most smartphones, and hence it can be easily implemented on any smartphone.
This section provides background information related to the present disclosure which is not necessarily prior art.